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Religion and Modesty

Jill

Some excellent thoughts from an Orthodox rabbi:

The ultra-Orthodox men in Israel who are exerting control over women claim that they are honoring women. In effect they are saying: We do not treat women as sex objects as you in Western society do. Our women are about more than their bodies, and that is why their bodies must be fully covered.

In fact, though, their actions objectify and hyper-sexualize women. Think about it: By saying that all women must hide their bodies, they are saying that every woman is an object who can stir a man’s sexual thoughts. Thus, every woman who passes their field of vision is sized up on the basis of how much of her body is covered. She is not seen as a complete person, only as a potential inducement to sin.
…
So the responsibility is now on the women. To protect men from their sexual thoughts, women must remove their femininity from their public presence, ridding themselves of even the smallest evidence of their own sexuality.

All of this is done in the name of the Torah and Jewish law.

But it’s actually a complete perversion. The Talmud, the foundation of Jewish law, acknowledges that men can be sexually aroused by women and is indeed concerned with sexual thoughts and activity outside of marriage. But it does not tell women that men’s sexual urges are their responsibility. Rather, both the Talmud and the later codes of Jewish law make that demand of men.

…

The Talmud tells the religious man, in effect: If you have a problem, you deal with it. It is the male gaze — the way men look at women — that needs to be desexualized, not women in public. The power to make sure men don’t see women as objects of sexual gratification lies within men’s — and only men’s — control.

Pretty on-point, from a religious perspective or not.

59 thoughts on Religion and Modesty

  1. Yes! Whom I desire is entirely internal to me, and harms nobody until I make someone else aware of it.

    The Dragon Tattoo novels came up in another thread and that reminds me of a less-discussed character, Dragan Armansky.

    very, very minor spoiler

    Armansky wanted to have sex with Salander, but for various reasons it wasn’t going to happen. So he did something that should be perfectly ordinary, but that is almost absent from popular culture: he just shut the fuck up. He didn’t say anything about it. He went about being her friend, and her boss. Wanting sex with her was something he kept to himself, but it didn’t make him repressed or bitter or pathetic. Just considerate.

  2. I’m still pretty confident in saying that he has a mechitza (barrier separating the men’s and the women’s seating areas) at his synagogue.

  3. Well, R. Linzer is the the dean of an Orthodox rabbinical school; Open Orthodoxy as opposed to Modern Orthodoxy, but still Orthodox. So yeah, I assume there’s a mechitza at his shul. I don’t see that detracting from his pretty righteous Talmudic smackdown, though.

  4. I don’t put much faith in the gender analysis of any orthodox rabbi. What I know about their faith and the rest of their beliefs makes me absolutely sure I will agree with them on very little and probably find many of their beliefs offensive.

  5. Incidentally, I’d also argue that this thread of theology thinks awfully little of men; the idea that all dudes are completely incapable of controlling themselves or their actions when it comes to sex (or really anything) is about as misandrist as they come, plus it gets used to justify rape and sexual assault against women, and it’s one of the reasons men who are raped or assaulted aren’t taken seriously! So clearly this idea is Bad News.

    Yes! Whom I desire is entirely internal to me, and harms nobody until I make someone else aware of it.

    Yes! I am so sick of the idea that being attracted to someone is ‘committing adultery in your heart,’ i.e. thoughtcrime. You know what? I have friends who are really attractive, some of whom I have hooked up with before, and whom it’d be fun to jump into bed with- except that I value their friendship and don’t want to complicate it, I’m dating someone who I love and would never cheat on, and my attraction to them is completely superficial! And that’s totally fine! The mindset that when you’re in a relationship you have to be constantly thinking about only your significant other, exclusively, or you’re not really committed is just dumb.

  6. So yeah, I assume there’s a mechitza at his shul. I don’t see that detracting from his pretty righteous Talmudic smackdown, though.

    His argument is that it’s incumbent upon men to control themselves, and that the solution is not to restrict women. But he still leads/participates in religious services that require the segregation of men and women. How is that logically consistent?

  7. I don’t put much faith in the gender analysis of any orthodox rabbi. What I know about their faith and the rest of their beliefs makes me absolutely sure I will agree with them on very little and probably find many of their beliefs offensive.

    That’s fine, but do you agree with this particular statement?

  8. Discussing what is the “true religion” is a fool’s game. Religion is whatever the practitioners make of it. Some (many) interpretations are misogynistic, some are not.

  9. I don’t put much faith in the gender analysis of any orthodox rabbi. What I know about their faith and the rest of their beliefs makes me absolutely sure I will agree with them on very little and probably find many of their beliefs offensive.

    I disagree on the grounds that my evaluation of someone’s idea or argument is absolutely independent of a) the other ideas that person has and b) the moral character of that person. Ghandi beat his wife, MLK cheated with numerous women and plagiarized his entire graduate thesis, and Hitler loved animals; in the first two cases, I can accept their ideas without blindly worshiping the men, and in the last, I can condemn most of Hitler’s ideas without condemning animal-love along with them.

    So, IMO, while I probably would disagree with the Rabbi on a lot, this particular argument about gender relations seems correct, and if in his personal life the man who wrote it kicked puppies and stole candy from orphanages, that would have exactly zero impact on said piece of writing.

  10. This was an interesting read; thanks for linking it.

    I’m always torn when I see religious arguments against a particular group’s bigotry-in-the-guise-of-religion.

    On one hand, I think we shouldn’t have to resort to religious arguments when it comes to bigots who use religion as an excuse to control and oppress women. It shouldn’t require a Talmud scholar or any religious scripture or law to say that if a man finds an 8-year-old attractive, or is attracted to a woman who’s not interested, that’s his problem, and he has no right to make it hers.
    (The same should also be true for any two people, regardless of gender.)

    On the other hand, some people will find religious arguments more compelling, especially when bigots are using religious arguments themselves. And it can be invaluable for people caught in the religious community to hear “Hey, our God doesn’t actually hate you for this, and you’re not a slut/Sinner/Dirty Person, either.”

    So, I guess… it’s too bad that we need the sectarian arguments, but it’s good that we have them, sometimes.

  11. But he still leads/participates in religious services that require the segregation of men and women. How is that logically consistent?

    Meh, most people I’ve spoken to about mechitzot tend to think that they’re for preventing distraction for both men and women. There’s usually equal assumption that the women might get distracted by the men. Of course, these are usually places with simple, down-the-middle mechitzot, not screwed up balcony or back of the room situations. Those suck ass. And, obviously, the whole mechitzah concept is totally hetero and cis normative.

    My favorite configuration was a 4 partition mechitzah (mar’viah?). There was a section for male identified folks, female identified folks, a “mixed” section, and space in the back for people to pace/meditate/read books/whatever. It was pretty sweet. I mostly jumped between the women’s only and mixed section, depending on how I was feeling at the moment.

    Anyways, I also appreciated the Talmudic smackdown. 🙂

  12. So, I guess… it’s too bad that we need the sectarian arguments, but it’s good that we have them, sometimes.

    Well, I think it’s sort of a twofold issue for those of us in the feminist Jewish community. Firstly, shit is misogynist and awful. And it’s important to point out that shit is misogynist and awful. Secondly, it’s not Torah. These people are claiming that it is, and it’s an awful corruption of our religion, as Rabbi Linzer points out. So a double-smackdown is necessary, one for being an awful person and another for furthering the corruption of Torah.

  13. My favorite configuration was a 4 partition mechitzah (mar’viah?). There was a section for male identified folks, female identified folks, a “mixed” section, and space in the back for people to pace/meditate/read books/whatever. It was pretty sweet. I mostly jumped between the women’s only and mixed section, depending on how I was feeling at the moment.

    I’ve read a book called Balancing on the Mechitza, about religious — primarily Orthodox — trans Jewish people. Not that it has any direct relevance to my life, but I still found it interesting.

    Well, I think it’s sort of a twofold issue for those of us in the feminist Jewish community. Firstly, shit is misogynist and awful. And it’s important to point out that shit is misogynist and awful. Secondly, it’s not Torah. These people are claiming that it is, and it’s an awful corruption of our religion, as Rabbi Linzer points out. So a double-smackdown is necessary, one for being an awful person and another for furthering the corruption of Torah.

    Not to mention that it’s always good to remind people that Judaism in general and even Orthodox Judaism in particular are not, necessarily or in their entirety, misogynist. Especially given the underlying Christian-centric perspective towards Judaism that’s long existed in some feminist circles.

  14. Personally, I would prefer the ring of Gyges: presto, you’re invisible! Not only do you get away from the male gaze, but you can kick it in the pants and never get caught 🙂

  15. Well, I gotta say, this is the first male religious leader I’ve ever heard or heard of using the term “male gaze”.

    And (as usual) trying to pick up what you’re laying down, Shoshie & DonnaL.

  16. His argument is that it’s incumbent upon men to control themselves, and that the solution is not to restrict women. But he still leads/participates in religious services that require the segregation of men and women. How is that logically consistent?

    How he chooses to daven – mechitza or otherwise – doesn’t detract from my appreciation of his Talmudic smackdown. I also think it’s very important to have an Orthodox rabbi coming out and saying not only that the sexist bullshit in Beit Shemesh is indeed sexist bullshit, but also not actually consistent with, you know, Judaism/Jewish law.

  18. @DonnaL

    Do I agree that is what the Talmud says? I agree that it’s a valid interpretation, one that I’ve heard many times from many rabbis. You know what else these rabbis did? They banned boys from women’s choir performances, even though I was openly gay, because they refused to acknowledge my sexual identity as anything other than a reason to expel me.

    These same rabbis also told some women students that their shirt was too inappropriately low cut, so i guess all the flowery rhetoric of how men bear the responsibility of their own sexual attraction breaks down when women want to be in a traditionally male space like an orthodox day school.

    In the end, his basis for authority is the Talmud, but I actively give zero shits what the Talmud says about this because the Talmud is full of lots of racist and sexist shit.

    For example:
    There’s an entire tract on menstruating and a lot of it is just plain false medical information.

    So like, I guess this fills people’s wish for a Jewish authority to speak out against ultra orthodox extremism and showcase the “suitable for nonjewish consumption” parts of the talmud, but I know that if he holds the Talmud as an authoritative text then he is oppressing gay people and women often and well.

  19. Doublylinkedlists, I thought that’s who you were; I remember you very well from another thread in which you universalized your own terrible experiences with Jewish religious education into a blanket condemnation of Orthodox Judaism in its entirety and in all its forms (including a priori pronouncements that to the extent non-misogynistic Orthodox Judaism and interpretations of Talmud exist, they aren’t “authentic” and therefore don’t count in the balance).

    By the way, it’s not as if people who aren’t Jewish haven’t been “consuming” the Talmud to pull out all the “awful” things it has in it, just like every other religious text does — primarily, of course, the negative statements in the Talmud about Christianity and Jesus — for at least the last 800 years or so. Or as if they don’t continue to do so today all over the Internet, whether accurately or otherwise. It’s not like the Talmud is a big secret.

    If you want to condemn all organized religions for the negative aspects of their texts and history, fine, but don’t assume that everyone’s experiences and interpretations are the same as yours, or are necessarily less valid.

  20. @Donna well they were my experiences. And all four of my siblings. And my mother. And many of my friends. And the one other openly gay student. But I guess it’s just me and my attempt to universalized my experience.

    The Talmud as a text is not secret, though it is not very accessible. The Talmud as a religious doctrine taught by members of the orthodox community is very often filtered for public consumption because a lot of what it says is embarrassingly bigoted.

    Whenever I see nonmisogynist orthodox Judaism

  21. What I meant was not that your experiences were unique within that school, but that they were people’s experiences at the one or more particular schools you’re familiar with. You’re still universalizing a particularized experience.

  22. @Donna well they were my experiences. And all four of my siblings. And my mother. And many of my friends. And the one other openly gay student. But I guess it’s just me and my attempt to universalized my experience.

    The Talmud as a text is not secret, though it is not very accessible. The Talmud as a religious doctrine taught by members of the orthodox community is very often filtered for public consumption because a lot of what it says is embarrassingly bigoted.

    Whenever I see nonmisogynist orthodox Judaism, it’s been called “conservative” because orthodox judaism forms communities riddled with homophobia and misogyny.

    I’d like to know on what grounds of your own you dismiss my long and widely shared experience with this particular form of organized religion. I lived, breathed and ate that world for the first 18 years of my life, and I studied in that environment for 7 hours a day for my first seven years of schooling and 10-12 hours for the next six. I spent all four years of high school being openly gay in an orthodox jewish school, something that nobody else has ever done to my knowledge.
    The only other person I’ve ever heard of coming out at such an institution was a student at my school while I was there because he had my support.

    So while you can dismiss my individual opinion if you’d like, please don’t pretend my experience is not informed by those of many others in similar situations. This includes queer and women students at my own school and others throughout the US.

  23. So, IMO, while I probably would disagree with the Rabbi on a lot, this particular argument about gender relations seems correct, and if in his personal life the man who wrote it kicked puppies and stole candy from orphanages, that would have exactly zero impact on said piece of writing.

    Justamblingalong, you’re awesome. I totally and completely agree.

    @FashionablyEvil: I agree with you that mechizot are troubling, and probably not logically consistent with the statement in Jill’s original post. But we’re not here to deconstruct this guy’s whole life, probable mechizot or not. The only thing we positively KNOW about him is that he said the statement Jill posted: everything else is purely speculation, even things that most orthodox rabbis ascribe to (e.g. mechizot etc). Can’t we just agree that his smackdown is awesome and righteous? If it later comes to light that he is a deep and terrible racist, or something, then that is problematic. But a) that doesn’t stop his statement in the post being awesome, and b) at the moment we know nothing of the sort.

  24. For the record, the school I attended is known as one of the most liberal orthodox Jewish day schools. Thats probably why they just tried to expel me for being gay three times instead of actually doing it. There’s a reason no one comes out in orthodox high schools.

  25. Here’s an article about gay people in the orthodox movement and an example of the rhetoric used against them. Rabbi Linzer is quoted. I guess I missed the part where he denounced religious discrimination against queer identified individuals. Maybe he was distracted thinking about what he could say to frame their struggle as personal problems of identity.

    http://forward.com/articles/2807

  26. Here’s a site about being frum and gay

    http://www.orthogays.org/faq.html

    It is extremely homophobic.

    I guess I keep posting because bloggers on feminist love to post about the beauty of orthodox Jewish thought (as opposed to those crazy extremist Jews) and I find it to be infuriatingly white washed.

  27. Modesty, according to Judaism is taking up the right amount of space for who you are and the situation you are in. You don’t act larger than life when you’re having dinner with your family, and you don’t act like a meek little mouse if you’re on stage being honored for something. One must expand who they are to fit their circumstances.

    Forced “modesty” is a lie because it denies a person the ability to expand to meet the needs of her situation. In order to be truly modest, one MUST have agency and autonomy. It doesn’t work any other way.

  28. hating the way the new website design automatically cuts posts. In this one, it looked like you were highlighting some offensive sexist bs; other times I click through to just one more paragraph. Both are annoying if you’re on a slow connection or skimming and don’t click every post.

  29. Forced modesty isn’t a lie. It’s a daily oppression many orthodox Jewish women face on a daily basis.

  30. Look, I’m a Jewish trans woman with a gay 21-year old son, and I may not be Orthodox, but I’m well aware how homophobic — and transphobic — the institution of Orthodox Judaism is in general. I’m not that clueless

    But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t feminist Orthodox Jewish women trying to build their own communities, and Orthodox Jewish men who support them. (There’s no Pope of the Jews to make them stop, after all.) And all kinds of Orthodox Jews who fight back against the ultra-Orthodox attempts to control the entire discourse.

    And it doesn’t mean it’s right for you to derail every single thread in which anyone says anything positive about anything that any Orthodox Jews say or do on any issue. You should do what Melissa McEwan always tells people to do when they derail a thread at Shakesville. Write your own post and submit it.

  31. I always wonder about the kind of men who use these sorts of excuses to be assholes.

    My partner once asked me if I’d ever cheat on him. I said no, and when he asked why, I said I didn’t want to. If I wanted to, I would. It’s me. My choices, my decisions, and that makes me feel good. It makes me feel in control, and, I think, it makes me more trustworthy.

    I wonder how terrible it must feel to be completely out of control all the time, so much that everyone around has to walk on eggshells so you can keep your shit together. And I wonder what kind of person you’d have to be to smugly declare that people deserved it when you hurt them.

  32. Well, it’s kind of a given that religion is misogynistic- if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be real religion, because then there wouldn’t be the promise of finally being equal in Heaven- or the next life.

    That said, I’m impressed that a guy from a very very conservative branch of a religion could make such a progressive (for that branch) statement. It’s like a guy from the ’50s figuring out that women are people.

  33. So men are so weak, so unable to control themselves – or is it unable and unwilling — Because women are nothing but property.

  34. FSM forbid Doubly Linked Lists talk about Orthodoxy as she experienced it.

    Fuck’s sake, am I tired of all the undue respect theists demand in feminist and other progressive spaces. Your religions are not exempt from serious criticism just because they’re your precious beliefs. Privilege, u haz it.

  36. J, you’ve stated the point concisely and beautifully.
    Yes, the Talmud’s writings on women and reproductive functions are cringe-inducing. Current ultra-Orthodox activity, though, looks suspiciously like an attempt to appease the Islamic radical right by utilizing the same behaviors to convince the enemy that God favors the most misogynist team, thereby redirecting the suicide bombers etc, over to harass the “liberal” Conservative and Reform Jews.

  37. How many threads have we seen on this site about the 150 so ultra orthodox families that harass 8 yr olds in Israel? Such a scandal, when this group of people is in such a minority that their chief opposition comes from their neighboring almost-as-orthodox communities before we even get to the secular majority.

    Why is it that when ultra orthodox Jews harass other orthodox girls, we call it such a scandal when women cannot even walk the streets by themselves without enduring constant harassment in most of the middle east?

    In Yemen, adult women get arrested simply for walking about by themselves. In Saudi Arabia, women get spit on for walking fully veiled in their neighborhoods by themselves. Walk down the street in Jordan with a sleeveless shirt, and you will have men yelling obscenities to you. Walk down the street in a knee length skirt and see the amount of men that grab at you. I know because I’ve done it.

    Every year, 8 yr old girls in Yemen and Saudi Arabia are returned to the adult husbands they run away from. Look it up. Google is your friend.

    And when we are talking about harassing girls in the streets in Yemen or Saudi Arabia or Jordan, we are not talking about the behavior of 150 families of extremists. We are talking about the majority of men. Look that up too if you don’t believe me.

    Why do we seem to care only when it is done to Jewish girls? The rest of the women in the middle east are deserving of less respect?

  38. Current ultra-Orthodox activity, though, looks suspiciously like an attempt to appease the Islamic radical right by utilizing the same behaviors to convince the enemy that God favors the most misogynist team, thereby redirecting the suicide bombers etc, over to harass the “liberal” Conservative and Reform Jews.

    I nominate this comment for best new bizarre conspiracy theory.

  39. FSM forbid Doubly Linked Lists talk about Orthodoxy as she experienced it.

    Fuck’s sake, am I tired of all the undue respect theists demand in feminist and other progressive spaces. Your religions are not exempt from serious criticism just because they’re your precious beliefs. Privilege, u haz it.

    Not that it really matters, but what makes you think Doublylinkedlists is a “she”? I got the distinct impression that the poster is a “he”; a gay man.

    As to the rest, if you’re referring to me, why in the world would you think I’m a “theist”? Or that Orthodox Judaism is my religion? Neither could be further from the truth. I’ve been an atheist since I was about 5 (occasionally straying into agnosticism), and nobody in my father’s family has been Orthodox since my great-great-grandfather, a dayan and the son of a rabbi, died in Jurbarkas in Lithuania in April 1887 (his son was a socialist labor organizer and hatmaker on the Lower East Side who died young like many in his occupation); nobody’s been Orthodox on my mother’s side since her grandparents were sent to French-run concentration camps in October 1940 (to the extent that the way a cow dealer and his family lived in a village in Baden can be called strictly “Orthodox”). I suspect that I’ve arguing with people about misogyny and homophobia (including with Orthodox Jewish people) since before most of you were born.

    I simply don’t happen to agree that every positive attempt by an Orthodox Jew to oppose misogyny or homophobia or other pernicious beliefs has to be derailed by a blanket condemnation of the evil Talmud, and of the general evils of Orthodox Judaism. I’m not even remotely an expert on Talmud, but know enough to be well aware of the misogyny it contains (after all, I have read the book A Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud!). I just don’t agree that all Orthodox Jews should simply give up, abandon their religion, and become Conservative or Reform, rather than trying to advocate for more feminist-positive interpretations and ways of practicing their religion. As I said, it’s not like Roman Catholicism; there’s no Pope or formal hierarchy that has the power to kick anyone out of Orthodox Judaism. And I’ve studied more than enough post-Talmudic Jewish history to know that there’s more than one way of putting the religion into practice, and that there have been plenty of rabbis, as long as a thousand years ago, who did what they could to interpret it in a way that protected the rights of women in and outside of marriage. Not to mention all the medieval Jewish homoerotic poetry that I assume wasn’t on the curriculum at Doublylinkedlist’s school! I also wonder if zie has studied enough Jewish history to be entirely familiar with the reasons why Jews have ample historical justification for being wary of non-Jews coming in and pillaging Jewish religious texts looking for excuses to condemn the Jewish people.

    Nor will I ever forget that the most positive, accepting, and friendly person towards me at my office since my transition is a practicing Orthodox Jew (modern variety).

    So please get a clue, and read what I said more carefully. If you’re not Jewish yourself, and/or haven’t studied Jewish history, what you know about “haz privilege” on this subject could fit into a thimble with plenty of room left over.

  40. Whenever I see nonmisogynist orthodox Judaism, it’s been called “conservative” because orthodox judaism forms communities riddled with homophobia and misogyny.

    Are you familiar at all with JOFA or with YCT/Open Orthodoxy?

    I guess I keep posting because bloggers on feminist love to post about the beauty of orthodox Jewish thought (as opposed to those crazy extremist Jews) and I find it to be infuriatingly white washed.

    I think you’re referring to my guest posts here, though I may be wrong. As I mentioned before, I’m a religiously observant Jew, but I’m not Orthodox. I go to a fiercely feminist shul that performs gay marriages and has several prominent trans* members.

    I can’t imagine what it must have been like to come out in an Orthodox school. That sounds like a harrowing experience, and I certainly understand why you’re incredibly skeptical towards Orthodoxy and Judaism in general. But I think it’s important not to write off the efforts of people like Rabbi Linzer, because it’s folks like them who are going to make life easier for gay Orthodox kids.

    Well, it’s kind of a given that religion is misogynistic- if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be real religion, because then there wouldn’t be the promise of finally being equal in Heaven- or the next life.

    This confused me. Do you mind elaborating?

    And, just…geez, Rabbi Linzer isn’t part of some Ultra-Orthodox sect. He’s part of a movement to try to get the Orthodox world to be *less* misogynistic.

  41. @Donna L
    Hi. You’re neato. I like what you have to say. That’s all I’ve got, but sometimes it’s nice to hear (read) things like that, so I thought I’d put it out there.

  42. it’s important not to write off the efforts of people like Rabbi Linzer, because it’s folks like them who are going to make life easier for gay Orthodox kids. . . . And, just…geez, Rabbi Linzer isn’t part of some Ultra-Orthodox sect. He’s part of a movement to try to get the Orthodox world to be *less* misogynist.

    Thank you. And, Doublylinkedlists, I’ve never doubted for a moment how difficult it’s been for you and so many others. I apologize to the extent I came across as doing so in any way. I do, think, though, that there is good work being done, as Shoshie says, and that it’s important not to write it off.

    And, thanks oxygengrrl. That’s very kind of you to say.

  43. Since it’s been brought into question, DonnaL is right in assuming I am a gay man.

    To Shoshie, I actually very much appreciate your posts on here because I do think that expanding feminism into all the vast areas of life is important for progress, and to see it be done in an area that I find to be devoid of actual liberal thought is nice. Judaism is a huge part of my identity one way or another, so I feel strongly about it and want it to be discussed.

    I just don’t find the above statement to be anything particularly enlightened because I’ve seen the exact same philosophy lead to some pretty terrible policies. My point is that the above statement does not actually combat misogyny at all. It’s just a more “benevolent” misogynist policy on sexual activity.

    DonnaL,
    I believe I’m suitably familiar with the type of history you’re talking about.

    But to your point about Orthodox Jews attempting to change their movement into a more egalitarian one? They did that already. That’s conservative Judaism. That’s what happens when you actually attempt to combat the misogyny in religious Jewish traditions, instead of publishing lukewarm heteronormative thoughts that give authority to the Talmud first and feminism second.

    The problem in my mind inherent in an attempt to change the misogyny of the Talmud while remaining in the Orthodox Jewish tradition is that an essential part of the Orthodox Jewish tradition is that Talmud’s holy authority over people’s daily lives is greater than that of God. It is of the utmost importance that the opinions of the Rabbis in the Talmud are respected, and this is why they have a bearing on whether it’s okay to flip on a light switch.

    Any attempt to bring actual feminist analysis while maintaining that level of authority would result in a contradiction.

  44. About misogyny in the Talmud: as someone who’s studied Talmud as her primary activity for a number of years now, this is strange. It’s about 3000 “pages” long and fills a shelf, and it is composed of the conversations of hundreds of people throughout a time period spanning a few hundred years. To say the Talmud is misogynist is like saying France is misogynist. Like, what does that mean? That people say bad things? That government policies need to be changed? That in Medieval France women were property? That the language is gender-inflected?

    What I mean is that “Talmud” is awfully big and is composed of a crowd of disorganised voices. Its misogynistic parts, far from being whitewashed in my opinion, are emphasised to an unbelievable degree in some parts of modern Judaism. Here is one example: the personalities in the Talmud display a very diverse range of sexual behaviour and ethics, from women who (with the approval of the narrative) get married just for a night so they can sleep with a desirable man, to a man who puts himself in an oven in shame because he thought he slept with a woman not his wife, to Reish Lakish and R Yohanan’s homoerotic river encounter. Out of a huge sea of behaviours, the Shulhan Arukh picks one or two to serve as models for human sexuality, to my mind, oppressive ones. But to call that redaction “Talmud” is to buy into censorship and affirm that “real” religion must mean “sexually disturbed and misogynist.”

    A mention was made of the tractate on menstruation, Masekheth Nidah, which I’m currently studying. Does it contain medically incorrect information? Yes, of course it does, about men and women! It’s from 1500 years ago for crying out loud! However it should be noted that very few people actually STUDY Masekheth Nidah, even/especially when they want to study the laws of nidah. The reason is that it is far, far more permissable than later/contemporary authorities would have people believe. Also, while the misogynistic and simply silly statements about women have been made famous and into some people’s halakhah, if people read Masekheth Nidah they would realise that there is a wealth of material also highly restricting men, concerned with male “impurity,” etc. But the goal of most people nowadays is to restrict women for the sake of men, not to cramp men’s style, so they don’t look to the Talmud.

    Random tidbit: Maskheth Nidah bans pants… for men, not women.

  45. I concur with NotAWhiteGirl, while Orothdox Judiam in Israel is scary they are a -minority- and do not have that much political power. After all if they did I am pretty sure women wouldn’t be serving in the IDF in combat roles or most likely not at all; something that is still not allowed in the U.S military to this day. The Right Wing in America has more power than these fools do along with the conservatives in other middle eastern countries such as Yemen, Saudi Arabia etc.

  46. That’s conservative Judaism.

    As someone who grew up in the Conservative movement and currently belongs to a Conservative synagogue…no.

    Yes, the Conservative movement tends to be more progressive than Orthodoxy (which is an odd comparison because, while there is a Conservative institution that is a cohesive organization, the same does not really exist for Orthodox Judaism). But strong feminism within Conservative Judaism is actually quite recent and some of the hardest feminist battles I’ve had to fight have been within Conservative institutions.

    There are also many organizations/communities that do not affiliate themselves with the Conservative movement but also probably do not fall under the umbrella of Orthodoxy. So, it’s a bit more complicated.

    Also:

    Yonah- Word.

  47. while Orothdox Judiam in Israel is scary they are a -minority- and do not have that much political power

    That’s not really true. Israel has a parliamentary system, so the governments are coalitions with members from several parties. The ultra-Orthodox are a large enough bloc that they are part of the coalition government because you need a majority to govern. They’re a minority that has outsized political power because of the political system in Israel.

  48. @ Yonah

    It’s cool that you’re studying the talmud from the perspective that it is just an ancient and long religious text with the philosophies of many different people. The above statement that I was responding to, however, was not placing the Talmud in that context.

    You seem to think I object to the Talmud as a book, like I think it’s evil and should be burned, but as you stated for yourself, the talmud is massive, and you can read pages and pages about carrying clay pots down a dirt road where a body might be buried on your way to Jerusalem without encountering anything overtly misogynist (except that all the opinions you’ll read will be men’s opinions).

    Out of curiosity Yonah, are you using a translation to study?

    @Shoshie
    The conservative movement is where I’ve seen the most strides taken on an institutional level towards explicit egalitarianism while attempting to maintain a level of observance. I’m referring to the changes in prayers, the ordination of gay rabbis, the removal of the mechitzah, the restrictions on cross-dressing, etc

    Obviously it won’t be a bastion of feminist thought because it’s a religious community based on extreme Patriarchy. When you try and bend a misogynist religious framework into an equal one, it’s going to be very easy for other people to bend it back.

    It sounds like you’re placing focus on the idea that Conservative Judaism has a central institution while orthodoxy does not. I don’t understand why you think this point is so relevant.

  49. Why do we seem to care only when it is done to Jewish girls? The rest of the women in the middle east are deserving of less respect?

    I don’t think anybody would say this is the case. The post happens to be about Jewish girls, but writing about them does not in any way indicate that their issues are the only ones that matter. Moreover, I believe that simply because a different group may be facing different (or worse) problems, this does not serve as an excuse for ignoring the plight they face. They are still very real problems for the people who live them. I would similarly argue that their political power or lack thereof does not mean they are unworthy of our consideration.

  50. No, I study it in the original language; I speak Hebrew and read Aramaic. Are you aware that the standard response most mainstream “orthodox” people will give you if you try to prove something from the Talmud is “we don’t posken from the Talmud”? Religiously, I am unusual in that I try to do just that.

    About not encountering anything misogynistic, it’s not just that the Talmud is more than a misogynistic screed (I give you more credit than that!), I meant that you can also encounter all sorts of material about gender or women and men and not find anything misogynistic, or let’s put it another way, find things from perspectives other than misogyny. Unsurprisingly, they’re not famous, because they’re not in patriarchy’s interests to become famous. For example, there are many stories in the Talmud about men accusing women of not being virgins. In literally every single one the man is publically whipped, driven out of town, or mocked. Or there are many stories of men trying to tell women to be more modest, and again they always end in the man being terribly mistaken, or punished, or realising the error of his ways. Obviously that is completely irrelevant to the hareidim of Beit Shemesh, because they really don’t care about Talmud except as an intellectual/social status thing. There’s an interesting part in Masekheth Nidah that talks about ejaculating women and menstruating men, and I’m currently trying to think how this could be helpful/apply to nidah and trans people.

    I think the issue of Talmud and feminism/misogyny is in some ways very similar to the issue of “the past” and feminism/misogyny. On the one hand, I think it’s safe to say that women in the past were mostly oppressed. On the other hand, it’s not by accident that feminists in every generation are made to feel that they are starting new, cut off from their own traditions and histories. Shushing women’s history and minimising their ability to connect with women and pro-woman traditions in the past is such a fabulous patriarchal recipe. I’m not even talking about some imaginary golden goddess past here, I’m talking about fully egalitarian Jewish communities in 200 CE, about R Meir’s position that women MUST put on tefilin just like men, about “my wife has become a man in every way, do I need to give him a get,” about Yaltha smashing 500 bottles of wine when a man tells her that her only significance is through her husband, about those women who arrange temporary marriages with hotties. To imagine or excuse them a way is how patriarchy is not content with controlling the present, but must also colonise the past.

  51. Speaking as someone whose religious beliefs are on the liberal end of “Modern Orthodox”: I accept that the people on the extreme right wing of the Jewish community are totally convinced that they are “more Jewish”, “more religious”, “more authentic”, “more traditional” than the liberals. I expect no less of them, and heck, if I agreed with them, I’d have joined them years ago. But it drives me nucking futs when I see the same attitude from people who themselves belong to more religious liberal movements, or who do not consider themselves religious at all.

    Whether or not you are Orthodox—whether or not you are Jewish—I hope you can take home the following lesson from Rabbi Linzer’s op-ed: the people who trumpet the most extreme fundamentalist spin on a religious tradition do not own its trademark.

  52. And, DLL, I’m telling you that the fight for egalitarianism in Conservative Judaism is much more complicated than the way your painting it. I don’t deny you your experiences growing up within an Orthodox community, please don’t deny me mine. And I think that the institutional component of Conservative Judaism is really important, especially given the proliferation of egalitarian, observant communities that intentionally choose not to affiliate.

    And, Yonah, can I just say that you are awesome?

  54. Yonah: “real” religion must mean “sexually disturbed and misogynist.”

    Well, yeah. Making any religion non-misogynistic, non-sexphobic and non-homophobic is like making water not be wet anymore.

    Shoshie: See above. Religions are ways to market a hierarchy: priests/rabbis/imams and the local monarchs are always on top, ordinary men in the middle and women and children on the bottom. The only way to keep religion viable is to tell those in the middle and on the bottom that there’ll be gravy in their future, but they have to content with jam today. In the case of women, that means telling them that unless they obey their father/husband/ and their preist/rabbi/imam until the day they die, they won’t ever get gravy. (In the case of Muslim and Mormon women, the ‘gravy today’ never happens, even after they die.)

  55. Speaking as someone whose religious beliefs are on the liberal end of “Modern Orthodox”: I accept that the people on the extreme right wing of the Jewish community are totally convinced that they are “more Jewish”, “more religious”, “more authentic”, “more traditional” than the liberals. I expect no less of them, and heck, if I agreed with them, I’d have joined them years ago. But it drives me nucking futs when I see the same attitude from people who themselves belong to more religious liberal movements, or who do not consider themselves religious at all.

    Yes, for real. This makes me want to bang my head against a wall. I’m in the process (though currently a little stalled out) of converting after being raised Catholic, which I think makes me particularly disinterested in that line of thinking.

  56. R Meir’s position that women MUST put on tefilin just like men

    R. Meir of Rothenburg wrote that? That’s fascinating — where can I find that?

  57. nm, no, it’s R Meir the Tanna (“baal haNeis”), and you can find his position in Masekheth Shabath 62a, around the top of the daf.

    Thank you, Shoshie my second-degree friend, and DonnaL who I wish was my penpal or at least had a blog link.

  59. Here’s the thing. Having graduated from said school, and no longer being forced to memorize talmud on a daily basis, I am uninterested in the logical hoops and jumps that one can make to find the parts of the talmud that are not outright misogynist. I’m glad that people can reclaim the talmud and their jewish heritage because it makes them feel bad that Judaism has such a long history of misogyny, and that orthodox Judaism has a long history of even greater misogyny.

    The genius of the Talmud is that there is no consistency throughout. There are diametrically opposing opinions and decisions and commentaries that allow the observer to find the ones to their liking if they so wished.

    God knows I spent a lot of saturday afternoons reading artscrolls in the beit midrash instead of listening to the parsha, and I personally like the strange stories about crazy huge whales and their treasure.

    But the truth as I see it is this: The talmud is used nowadays as a text of great authority by many people (not necessarily in action, like you say yonah, but in thought, definitely) and those people, the VAST majority of those people embrace its homophobic or misogynistic portions with little questioning or critical thinking.

    Add to that the fact that this book is not the word of God and has only to do with the thoughts of men who thought their authority was greater than God’s in some way (but only because God said so).

    The finished impression I have from that line of thought is that I don’t want a response to misogyny in the form of religious extremism to at all view the Talmud as an authority. Any such response reeks of a “no true scotsman” attempt to divorce the author from those other people. In addition, when I hear a Rabbi say that really the Talmud says X about this, so those crazy extremists are “perverting” my true religion, I just feel uncomfortable knowing all the other things the Talmud tells him with great authority.

    If you really want to send the message that misogyny or homophobia is unacceptable, focus on why misogyny or homophobia is unacceptable, not on why it’s unacceptable in this case because the Talmud says so. That shit is trivializing as hell, and doesn’t serve to make anyone oppressed under the auspices of “religious judaism” feel safer. At least, it doesn’t make me feel any safer.

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